Deterministic communication and distributed control of avionics based on SpaceWire-D: SpaceWire missions and applications, short paper

As a switched network, SpaceWire can easily connect SpaceWire nodes together to realize parallel data communication, which can not only contain spacecraft interconnection between independent equipment, can also be used as “virtual backplane” to achieve mutual connection and communication between avionics internal hardware modules. However, SpaceWire nodes using asynchronous parallel operation mode are prone to causing network congestion, which is not conducive to the balance of network bandwidth. In this paper, a method of using the driver table between existing all-purpose interface controller of hardware module and SpaceWire node controller is implemented based on the SpaceWire-D protocol, to achieve deterministic SpaceWire network communication management. SpaceWire node send data to or receive data from the allowed nodes within the predefined time interval according to the information in the driver table, reaching the goal of deterministic communication and network flow optimization. In addition, through global communication time planning, when the processor module in certain avionics equipment fails while other hardware modules is still functioning, only the routing table in the SpaceWire router need to be reconfigured to complete the takeover of hardware module inside faulty equipment, without changing communication driver table information, thereby achieve the goal of distributed control.